


Fly or Fall

by StormysHealthyCopingMechanisms



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: I never really thought about it, I suppose it is canon-compliant, M/M, Not Really Anything, accidental drinking!, all of the drinking!, drinking!, set just after graduation, sort of fluffy!, spoilers?, woooooooo!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-25 02:34:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12026304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormysHealthyCopingMechanisms/pseuds/StormysHealthyCopingMechanisms
Summary: After exams, after graduation, after everything, Adam has run out of that valuable commodity, self-control. He's tired, he's stressed, he's liberated, and he's a total lightweight. After losing Gansey, and losing track of where he is and how much he's had, Adam resorts to calling Ronan for assistance, who is shockingly willing to oblige, if a bit vengeful.Pretty much just drunken fluff. Mostly drunken, less of the fluff.I cannot get Pynch out of my system. This is my life now.





	Fly or Fall

Adam got drunk after graduation.

It was an accident, really. He didn’t drink. He actively avoided drinking. But there were fireworks and shouts and cheers and good humour and he was, genuinely, so elated he could have cried. And if someone pushed something sugary and unidentifiable into his hand during the after-party he’d reluctantly agreed to attend, and he was exhausted from stress and didn’t have the foresight not to drink it… Yeah, that was on him.

But it was like the champagne and the panic-stricken fugue of Gansey’s parent’s house. The first drink sank straight to his bones, made everything sharp and loud and overwhelming and made accepting the second and third (potentially a fourth…) seem like a sensible option.

Dammit.

Where was Gansey? Where was anyone he knew amongst this sea of familiar, yet somehow distorted faces?

Adam had been working towards one goal since he started at Aglionby, graduation… and added onto that every other stress he’d met along the way. It never slipped his mind.

And now it was done and Adam felt like he was falling.

There was a disco ball and loud laughter and bright lights and colours. Adam slurped something which tasted like Red Bull and regretted it immediately. He was jostled and dragged somewhere. Someone looped a bright band of light around his wrist, like a boring version of one of Ronan’s magic lights. He laughed when he saw it.

 _Where was Gansey?_ God, he felt sick. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept more than two hours between study sessions, exams and work. He couldn’t even place the last proper meal he’d had. He was sure it had something to do with Gansey’s careful orchestration of the lives of his friends. Maybe some form of celebration for Blue’s graduation.

Blue probably wasn’t here, but he searched for her face anyway, in amongst the sweating sea of drunken teenage boys grinning ear-to-ear and girls wearing short dresses that made him feel awkward and clunky. Blue, Gansey. They would have grounded him.

Someone pushed something into his hand, shouting “Drink this, it’ll make you feel better.” It must have been a joke, it tasted like burning.

There was music and lights and tortilla chips and someone was whooping. Someone was slinging glowing goop. Fluorescent paint. Did Adam have to work tomorrow? He couldn’t remember.

Wetness sloshed over his wrist. He wanted to put the cup down but he couldn’t really find a surface that wasn’t bafflingly covered in other plastic cups and food and what might have been underwear. Where was he? This wasn’t the same house anymore.

He still didn’t have a cell, so he grabbed the nearest person and asked if they knew where Gansey was. A swimming face, a classmate… was it Jenkins? Atherton? answered in the negative, and pushed a slim phone into his hands, yelling about INSTA and SNAPCHAT and a variety of other things Adam didn’t know how to operate.

He dialled Gansey’s number and lifted the phone to his ear, watching the glittering strobing lights over his head as the ringing tone trilled in his ear. It was a pretty sound. He wondered if he should have let Gansey get him a phone. He wondered at the basic magic of technology. The magic of hearing that trill, trill, the sound of a potential answer.

The answer was only potential. Gansey didn’t pick up.

The lights were very high. The sea of people was heaving. How many drinks had Adam had? Where was he? Some kind of big room with huge vaulted ceilings and darkened corners.

His hand started shaking, feeling shoulders hitting his back and his arms and shoving him side to side. He needed to go. He needed to sit. To sleep.

He dialled another number, force of habit rather than sense. Maybe Gansey was with…

The phone rang and rang and he was mesmerised by the sound of it, the idea of it.

‘Fuck off.’

Ronan.

Maybe he was imagining things. Ronan never picked up the phone. But Adam also didn’t even have a phone, so this whole thing could easily be a dream, especially with Ronan’s voice so calm and derisive and sane in his ear. He laughed automatically. Dreaming about the dreamer. Hilarious.

‘Parrish.’ It was an unsurprised acknowledgement. It was Adam’s head talking to itself.

‘Lynch.’ He giggled. Trust his brain to conjure Ronan.

‘Fuck.’

The sound of Ronan’s intensity channeled into a single word laced with derision, judgement, power… it thrilled Adam. He felt very floaty.

‘You’re drunk, Parrish.’ Ronan continued, voice cold and restricted. Adam giggled again. ‘Where are you?’

‘Heh.’ Adam glanced around with a dazed grin, catching the curious gazes of a couple people near him. The boy, Atherton or Jenkins, had departed, and seemed to be writhing, rather like a stroke-victim, next to a group of semi-dressed classmates and females on a dance floor. Adam claimed the phone for himself. _Theft wasn’t charity_ , he reasoned, still grinning.

‘Adam.’ Ronan sighed, already done with his shit. ‘Where are you? Where’s Gansey?’

‘Mmh.’ Adam observed eloquently. ‘Can’t find him. Jenk- Athert- ins- ons…’ He mumbled into chuckles.

‘What? Who?’ Jealousy sharpened Ronan’s tone to a knife tip. Adam sucked his bottom lip affectionately. ‘Parrish, did someone give you something?’

Something? Something? Stuff. Several somethings. Liquid poisons, tasting like bleach. Adam couldn’t remember who, or what, or how many.

He groaned, half mimicking Noah. ‘Ro- _nan_.’

‘Adam, dammit, where are you?’

Adam could hear scuffling, jingling, and the dull thud of a car door. He laughed again. What a dream. Ronan was fun in dreams.

A hand, real hand, curled over his, pulling the phone from his ear, and a wide, bright-toothed mouth smiled straight into his eyeballs. ‘Yo, wanker!’

‘Fucker!’ Adam contributed generously, barely recognising the person addressing him.

The phone disappeared, and so did his anchor. Adam was tired, and wired, and the lights were so bright and colourful. He fell on someone standing next to him, and there was a burst of raucous laughter. His mind spiralled back to the feeling of Ronan pressed against him as they kissed, and honestly, he couldn’t think of anything more appealing.

He couldn’t really think, admittedly. He could only just sense the crush of dozens of bodies and stirring, pulsing music all around him.

Something cold was shoved into his hand. Someone shouted his name… just “Parrish! Parrish!” he didn’t know why. Someone was pulling his arms, and cold, layered flavour trailed down his throat. Was that alcohol, or something… else? It was more more temperature than flavour anyway.

Someone pulled, someone pushed, people shouted, lights spun and danced across his vision. Someone kissed his cheek, a high pitched voice squealed in glee.

Adam found himself on the floor. His hands were sticky and he was sweating. His back was against something hard, but things kept smacking on his legs, bruising his thighs and shins.

He was dizzy. Dizzy, dizzy. Lights and a thumping, swirling vortex of music.

Fingers, on his upper arm, either new or long-present, tightened to a painful degree. Adam inhaled sharply and let instinct take over.

Slackly, he let the the grip haul him upright and forwards.

‘I… don’t know…’ He said reflexively.

Another arm wound around his waist, and a low, angry voice growled… ‘Parrish, you moron.’

Ronan. Yes. Like magic.

‘Lynch, you… you…’ He laughed again. What the hell was Ronan suddenly doing here? Dreams were weird. ‘Ass.’

‘What did you take, Parrish?’ Lynch’s- Ronan’s voice was rough, like he was ready to fight. That wasn’t surprising, really, because Adam had cautiously prodded this line of thinking before, and discovered an abnormal fascination with Ronan’s darker, aggressive nature.

Adam still hadn’t formed an answer by the time the flashing lights vanished and were replaced with a vast expanse of rich dark fabric and air cold enough to send goosebumps across his skin. Ronan Lynch, tall and sinewy and whiplash taut, shouldered his way into Adam’s line of sight. He shouted a number of other things, including several creative swear words, but even Adam’s good ear was starting to throb with the memory of the coarse dubstep from the party. He smiled towards Ronan’s charcoal-fine features instead, and stopped listening.

Ronan folded him into a warm, dark room. The car. Ronan’s car. It smelled like alcohol and directionless aggression.

‘Lynch. Lynch. _You’re my hero_ …’ Adam sang discordantly, thinking sidelong of Noah’s cheekiness and inexhaustible love of 80’s movies.

Ronan scoffed, decided it wasn’t enough, and swore for extra measure.

‘You’re a fucking twerp.’

‘Oooooh.’ Adam answered, wondering if Noah could conceivably have possessed his mouth or his brain. He felt like he was outside himself. At the very least, his common sense was.

He felt Ronan’s arm prodding and pinning him on occasion as they drove. There weren’t any streetlights here, which was odd, but the BMW’s headlights bounced off trees and road signs and the flickering, flickering, flickering road lines. He started feeling unwell again. The artificial heat in the car and what must have been significant speed made him feel tangled and nauseous.

‘Lynch.’ He hissed warningly, and grabbed the pale wrist nearest to him.

He felt the car jerk before Ronan acknowledged his grip, and they must’ve pulled off the road because suddenly Ronan disappeared out of the driver’s seat. The passenger’s door was flung open, and Ronan grabbed his shoulder and tipped him sideways in time to have Adam throwing up outside the vehicle without even standing up. He did narrate it with a fair bit of profanity, though.

Adam coughed and groaned, and focused on the feeling of Ronan’s fingers sliding through his hair, thumb cold against the hot skin on the back of his neck.

‘If you wanted booze, you coulda’ just come over, asswipe.’ Ronan said, not unkindly. ‘Rather than take fuck knows what from those thick-as-shit fuckers.’

Adam felt a stirring of coherency stab into his brain from the pressure of vomiting.

‘I wasn’t-’ He gasped, unclearly. His tongue felt too big. His mouth tasted vile. ‘I didn’t-’ Ronan must know he hadn’t intended this.

Lynch growled a humourless “Ha.”

Adam wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His arm was quivering. Ronan pushed him upright and the door slammed shut.

‘Ronan, I don’t know what happened.’ There was too much apology in his voice, but he wasn’t even sure Ronan heard him as he slid back into the driver’s seat.

There was a pause before Ronan took off the parking brake. Cool fingers dug into Adam’s neck, just under his collar, and traced their way to his spine. He leaned into the sensation, a little self-conscious, a little shaken. It was starting to dawn on him how wrecked he was. God, how pathetic.

Ronan didn’t take him to the little apartment over St Agnes, or Monmouth. Ronan took him to the Barns, and pulled him into the cool, fresh air of the night.

‘Puke on me and I end you, Parrish.’

Ronan supported him into the house, up the stairs, and into the bathroom. His fingers picked open Adam’s shirt, and heat swarmed across Adam’s skin in response. It wasn’t the first time, but Adam couldn’t imagine a reality in which he got used to Ronan Lynch’s delicacy and precision in undressing him.

He was dragged almost to his feet, and plonked down again, into hot water. Ronan didn’t give him any warning, and he was immediately completely submerged. He clutched at the edge of the bath and Ronan’s arms and broke the surface, spluttering indignantly and swinging a fist. ‘Ass. Hole.’ At least Ronan had left his underwear on.

Lynch chuckled drily and Adam saw his shark-grin flash in the warm light.

‘Quit bitching. You owe me now.’ Lynch sounded unbearably smug, even though Adam suspected he wasn’t being serious. He still murmured a noise of agreement.

Ronan asked who’d given him the drinks a couple of times. And who’d taken him to the after-after-party without Gansey, which was in some old barn out of town Ronan had been forced to track down. And who’d given him the phone, and who’d taken the phone away again. Even if Adam could have adequately summoned a response to those questions, he wasn’t sure he would have told him. Lynch’s tone was venomous.

He lifted him out of the bath, wrapped him in a towel, and bundled him into bed. Ronan’s bed.

He felt clean and warm and fuzzy, and vast on the inside.

Ronan climbed into the bed next to him, more like a finely chiselled weapon than a teenager. He scraped his hand, fingernails curled downwards, across Adam’s stomach.

‘Next time you’re gonna sin, Parrish, you should invite the devil beforehand.’

Adam smiled at the ceiling.


End file.
